Climb aboard and test it out:

Move the airplane’s control stick and rudder pedals to operate the ailerons, stabilator, and rudder.

Watch the control surfaces and see first-hand how the flight dynamics – pitch, roll, and yaw – work together to control the airplane in flight.

Learn about the technology and physics of flight:

Parts of the aircraft

Four forces of flight

Phonetic alphabet

Lift equation

From Concept to Reality

The Frontier Flyer started life as a Thorp T-18 two-seat homebuilt aircraft – donated to the Museum by Worthy Warnack.

Extensive modifications were made to the aircraft to prepare it for its new role in the Museum’s education program. With the collaborative efforts and hundreds of hours of hard work by Museum volunteers Joe Swift and Ken Branscome; our friends at Gulfstream; and Car Wrap City, these changes included:

A Brief History About the Aircraft

The Thorp T-18 is a high performance cross-country homebuilt aircraft designed by John Thorp in 1963 that can carry two people and 80 pounds of luggage while cruising at 155 knots. The unique design afforded the builder a range of powerplants from a Lycoming O-290 (125hp) to a Continental IO-360 (180hp). The aircraft could be easily built from sheets of aluminum and with standard tooling, which made it one of the most popular homebuilt designs of the 1970s and 1980s.

The T-18 is historically significant as one of the first all-metal homebuilt airplanes, and it was the first homebuilt to use the stabilator, or “flying tail” instead of the traditional elevator hinged to a horizontal stabilizer. First developed by Air Force test pilot Jack Ridley for the supersonic Bell X-1 of the late 1940s, the stabilator has since been used other aircraft from Piper’s line of “Cherokee” light planes to the Museum’s General Dynamics F-16 “Fighting Falcon.” The T-18 was also the first homebuilt aircraft to fly around the world and to both the geographic and magnetic north poles, feats accomplished by the legendary Don Taylor in the early 1970s.